[geeks] Flicker users u in arms over MS acquisition...

[James Fogg]

> I thin MS bought Yahoo in order to get a damn clue about what it is
> they need to succeed on the Web. They haven't so far and that stand
> out as a huge blot on a very blotted copy book, that getting more
> blotted every year. It's kill or cure, IMHO.


I worked for Vicinity when it was consumed by Microsoft. They had big
promises, big plans and said they wanted to do right by Vicinity
customers. In the end they forced VCNT customers to adopt the vastly
inferior MS geolocation API (MSN Maps, essentially) and pissed off the
customers who then went to Mapquest.

They also immediately killed our public free interface (MapBlast), which
got as much traffic as MapQuest back in the day.

MS wanted only one thing, one less competitor. They couldn't give away
their geolocation services (literally), so they bought ours and burned
it down. I've been inside the machine and from what I've seen I don't
expect Yahoo will fair any better.

MS is simply pure evil.